Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Backend Platform)

Perplexity; California (MO); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Perplexity is seeking an experienced Backend Platform engineer to design and implement scalable backend systems that power authentication, authorization, and data flows. You will work across product teams to raise reliability and performance.

You will mentor engineers, define platform interfaces, and drive best practices in observability and incident response, while balancing safety, simplicity, and velocity in security-sensitive areas.

Qualifications

• Production backend systems design and implementation experience.
• Strong system design skills for scalable architectures.
• Hands-on experience with AWS, Kubernetes, and cloud tech.
• Proficiency in Python, Go, or Rust; multi-language environment work.
• Collaborative mindset for cross-team problem solving.
• Comfort with security-sensitive areas (auth, encryption) and pragmatic trade-offs.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and implementation of sandboxing platform with performance and reliability.
• Define and extend RBAC and authorization primitives at scale.
• Own backend services in authentication and encryption flows; collaborate with Security and Infra.
• Set technical bar for backend platform design, reliability, observability, and incident response.
• Partner with product and AI teams to define platform interfaces, SLAs, and integration patterns.
• Provide technical leadership across backend platform and mentor engineers.

Skills

System design

Backend development

Security awareness

Multi-language

Mentoring

Tools

AWS

Kubernetes

Job description

About the Role

The Backend Platform team is the backbone of Perplexity’s product reliability, scalability, and performance, enabling every product and AI team to build with confidence.

This high‑impact group builds and maintains critical infrastructure, including backend systems for authentication, authorization, real-time data flows, service orchestration, and sandboxing, to ensure fast, reliable, and secure user experiences. By setting rigorous standards for code quality, uptime and performance, the Platform team ensures everyone at Perplexity can innovate at speed on top of a robust, well-architected foundation.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the design and implementation of our sandboxing platform to safely execute untrusted and user‑generated code while meeting strict performance and reliability requirements.
• Define and extend our RBAC and authorization primitives, ensuring they scale with new product capabilities and enterprise controls.
• Own key backend services involved in authentication and encryption flows (including BYOK‑related pieces), partnering with Security and Infra on defense‑in‑depth.
• Set the technical bar for backend platform design and operations, driving best practices in reliability, observability, and incident response for always‑on systems.
• Partner with product and AI teams to define clear platform interfaces, SLAs, and integration patterns so new features can reliably build on shared backend capabilities.
• Provide technical leadership across the backend platform area, mentoring other engineers and making long‑term architectural decisions that keep the foundation simple, secure, and evolvable.

Qualifications

• Experience designing and building backend systems that run in production (typically 4+ years for mid-level, more for senior and staff).
• Strong system design skills, with a track record of creating efficient, reliable, and scalable architectures.
• Hands‑on experience with modern infrastructure (for example AWS, Kubernetes, and related cloud technologies).
• Strong proficiency in at least one backend language such as Python, Go, or Rust, and the ability to work effectively in a multi‑language environment.
• Collaborative mindset and eagerness to solve challenging technical problems with other experienced engineers.
• Comfort working in security‑sensitive areas (auth, authorization, encryption) and making pragmatic trade‑offs between safety, simplicity, and velocity.

If you’re excited about this role, we encourage you to apply even if your experience doesn’t match every qualification listed above.